Iowa State rolls past Texas for third-straight win over Longhorns

AMES — Iowa State continued its roll against Texas on Saturday.

The Cyclones easily handled the Longhorns in Jack Trice Stadium, 30-7. It was Iowa State’s third-straight win over Texas.

Iowa State (6-3, 4-2 Big 12) and Texas (4-5, 2-4) both left much to be desired in the first half with teams combining for just 10 total points and not a lot of offense.

But the in the second half, Iowa State got on a roll and scored 27 unanswered points.

Running back Breece Hall rushed for 19 yards on his first two carries of the game and rushed for minus-2 yards on his next five rushes. He finished with just 17 yards on seven carries in the first half.

In the second half, however, Hall found plenty of daylight and rushed 12 times for 124 yards, including a 47-yard touchdown run on the first drive of the second half to get Iowa State’s offense going. Hall finished with 19 carries for 141 yards and two touchdowns.

“I thought Breece had maybe one of the best games of his career,” Iowa State Coach Matt Campbell said. “When Breece and I talk, we talk about a complete tailback. There have been times where that’s been good and there’s been times where he’s not at the standard he wants to be at. I thought tonight, for our team to play great football, he needed to be an A player in all phases, and I think you saw that tonight.

“And yeah the 47-yard run shows those things, but to me, everything else that I saw from Breece Hall was really inspiring.”

After that Hall run, there was no turning back for the Cyclones. The defense continued its excellent play and punter Corey Dunn was able to pin Texas at the 4-yard line.

Texas went three-and-out and was forced to punt.

“It was a huge swing back to what the standard of excellence has been on defense,” Campbell said of how the defense played throughout the game. “I don’t know if we were as complete a week ago, but we certainly were tonight.”

Iowa State decided to go in for an early kill and, on the first play of the drive, the Cyclones ran a trick play.

Texas’ defense was aggressive throughout the night, at times overly aggressive. Iowa State took advantage when quarterback Brock Purdy threw it behind the line of scrimmage to receiver Xavier Hutchinson, who found a wide-open Tarique Milton for an easy 49-yard touchdown. Hutchinson’s pass wasn’t the prettiest throw of the night — he underthrew Milton a bit, he short-armed the pass and he hopped when he threw it, but it worked.

“Xavier said he was a quarterback until his junior year in high school,” Campbell said “But that throw wasn’t pretty and we can see why he’s not a quarterback anymore. It was a great call by (offensive coordinator) coach (Tom) Manning but that execution? We had been repping that for a couple of weeks. It was great to see Tarique finish it.”

Hutchinson tried to defend himself and the throw.

“(Campbell’s) just a hater,” Hutchinson said with a laugh. “If you look at it, it was right in stride. I didn’t lead him too far and I didn’t underthrow him too much.”

He did underthrow him. But at least he got him the ball. In practice, Hutchinson said they only ran the play twice and neither time it was successful. This was his third time running the play.

“I just thought, ‘You know what? They believe in me and it’s time to bring out my inner Tom Brady and throw a dime,’” Hutchinson said. “It wasn’t quite a dime, but I still like to think that I’m Tom.”

The defense forced a three-and-out on the next Texas possession, which was capped off by a Will McDonald sack, who is now Iowa State’s all-time sacks leader with 26.5.

“We know that JaQuan was such a great player for our program and we know what kind of career he had,” Campbell said. “I think it says a lot about Will’s ability.”

The offense answered with what looked like an easy four-play, 49-yard drive that had a 21-yard rush by Hall, a 23-yard pass to Kolar and was finished by Hall’s second rushing touchdown of the game, a 2-yard run.

Iowa State had 184 yards of offense in the third quarter, Texas had 6. The Cyclones had three sacks in the third quarter alone.

At that point, it appeared Texas had given up and Iowa State put in a few of its backups.

Hall finished with 19 rushes for 141 yards and two touchdowns.

Purdy completed 27 of his 38 passes for 252 yards. Hutchinson was his favorite target, catching eight passes for 96 yards.

The defense was undoubtedly led by McDonald. The defensive end led Iowa State with six tackles, including 2.5 sacks.

He was joined by Enyi Uwazurike, who also had 2.5 sacks.

Iowa State completely shut down Texas. The Longhorns had the same number of punts as they did first downs — 11.

Iowa State travels to Texas Tech next week (2:30 p.m., ESPN2).